How to delete a drive partition on Windows 10

By Mauro Huculak
last updated

You can delete virtually any partition (except the ones that make up the installation of Windows 10), and in this guide, you will learn to use three tools to complete this task.

Windows 10 delete drive partition
Windows 10 delete drive partition (Image credit: Windows Central)

On Windows 10, a partition (or volume) is a logical division of the space available on a physical storage drive with a specific file system and settings that the system presents to the user as a separate drive.

Since a drive can hold many partitions, and sometimes, you may need to organize them, Windows 10 includes multiple tools to ease the process to remove those you no longer need to make more space available to increase the size of another partition. Or you can also use the available tools to clean the storage to prepare it with a different partition scheme and file system.

In this Windows 10 guide, we'll walk you through the steps to delete a partition on an internal or external drive using Disk Management, PowerShell, and Command Prompt.

Warning: Using these instructions will erase all the data stored inside the partition. If you have any important files you want to preserve, it's recommended to create a backup of that data before proceeding.

How to delete a partition using Disk Management

To delete a partition (or volume) with Disk Management, use these steps:

  1. Open Start.
  2. Search for Disk Management.
  3. Select the drive with the partition you want to remove.
  4. Right-click (only) the partition you want to remove and select the Delete Volume option.

Source: Windows Central (Image credit: Source: Windows Central)
  1. Click the Yes button to confirm all the data will be erased.

Once you complete the steps, the partition and its contents will no longer be available on the drive making space available to expand another partition or format the drive with a new scheme.

How to delete a partition using PowerShell

On PowerShell, you have at least two different methods to remove a partition, including using the drive letter or partition number with different commands.

Delete partition with an assigned drive letter

To delete a partition that has an assigned letter, use these steps:

  1. Open Start.
  2. Search for PowerShell, right-click the top result, and select the Run as administrator option.
  3. Type the following command to get a list of all the available partitions and press Enter:Get-Volume
  4. Type the following command to delete the partition (and its contents) and press Enter:Remove-Partition -DriveLetter PARTITION-LETTERIn the command, make sure to replace "PARTITION-LETTER" for the letter of the partition you want to delete.For example, this command deletes the E partition:Remove-Partition -DriveLetter E

Source: Windows Central (Image credit: Source: Windows Central)
  1. Type Y and press Enter to confirm the deletion.

After you complete the steps, the partition will be removed, and the space on the drive will show as unallocated.

Delete partition without an assigned drive letter

To delete a partition that does not have a drive letter, use these steps:

  1. Open Start.
  2. Search for PowerShell, right-click the top result, and select the Run as administrator option.
  3. Type the following command to get a list of all the available drives and press Enter:Get-Disk
  4. Type the following command to get a list of all the available partitions on the drive and press Enter:Get-Partition -DiskNumber DRIVE-NUMBERIn the command, make sure to replace "DRIVE-NUMBER" for the number of the drive with the partition you want to erase (see step No. 3).For example, this command lists the partitions of drive 2:Get-Partition -DiskNumber 2
  5. Type the following command to delete the partition (and its contents) and press Enter:Remove-Partition -DiskNumber DRIVE-NUMBER -PartitionNumber PARTITION-NUMBERIn the command, make sure to replace "DRIVE-NUMBER" and "PARTITION-NUMBER" for the number of the drive and partition you want to delete.For example, this command deletes partition number 1 in drive 2:Remove-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -PartitionNumber 2

Source: Windows Central (Image credit: Source: Windows Central)
  1. Type Y and press Enter to confirm the deletion.

Once you complete the steps, the command will erase the partition from the hard drive you specified in the command.

How to delete a partition using Command Prompt

Alternatively, you can also use the DiskPart command-line with Command Prompt to delete a storage partition in at least two different ways.

Delete partition with volume command

To quickly delete a partition with the volume command, use these steps:

  1. Open Start.
  2. Search for Command Prompt, right-click the top result, and select the Run as administrator option.
  3. Type the following command to start diskpart and press Enter:diskpart
  4. Type the following command to get a list of all the available volumes and press Enter:list volume
  5. Type the following command to select the volume you want to delete and press Enter:select volume VOLUME-NUMBERIn the command, make sure to replace "VOLUME-LETTER" for the letter of the volume you want to delete.For example, this command deletes the volume number 4:select volume 4
  6. Type the following command to delete the volume from the drive and press Enter:delete volume

Source: Windows Central (Image credit: Source: Windows Central)

After you complete the steps, the volume and its data will no longer be available on the drive.

Delete partition with partition command

To delete a specific storage partition with a variant of the DiskPart command, use these steps:

  1. Open Start.
  2. Search for Command Prompt, right-click the top result, and select the Run as administrator option.
  3. Type the following command to start diskpart and press Enter:diskpart
  4. Type the following command to get a list of all the available drives and press Enter:list disk
  5. Type the following command to select the drive with the partition you want to delete and press Enter:select disk DRIVE-NUMBERIn the command, make sure to replace DRIVE-NUMBER for the number of the drive with the partition you want to delete (see step No. 4).For example, this command selects the disk number 2:select disk 2
  6. Type the following command to list all the available partitions in the drive and press Enter:list partition
  7. Type the following command to select the partition you want to delete and press Enter:select partition PARTITION-NUMBERIn the command, make sure to replace "PARTITION-LETTER" with the letter of the partition you want to delete.For example, this command deletes the partition number 1:select partition 1
  8. Type the following command to delete the partition from the drive and press Enter:delete partition

Source: Windows Central (Image credit: Source: Windows Central)

Once you complete the steps, the partition will be erased from the drive, making available the space to create a new partition with a different file system or extend another volume.

Mauro Huculak
Mauro Huculak

Mauro Huculak is technical writer for WindowsCentral.com. His primary focus is to write comprehensive how-tos to help users get the most out of Windows 10 and its many related technologies. He has an IT background with professional certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, and CompTIA, and he's a recognized member of the Microsoft MVP community.